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Sunday, March 4, 2018

Blog Tour: Bite Me by Beth Bolden (Guest Post + Giveaway)

Talented pastry chef Miles Costa is bored. Working at the celebrated Napa Valley restaurant Terroir is supposed to be the cherry on top to a promising career, but instead it's a creative desert. So when he gets an offer to turn his online video series into a career, he leaves his three best friends in Napa and swaps Terroir for Los Angeles.

With the resources now at his fingertips, turning his pastry series into a hit should be easy. Then Miles meets his producer, Evan Patterson, and realizes he’s screwed. And not even in the good way.

It's not a meet-cute . . .

Evan lives to work and loves every minute detail Miles loathes. Not only that, he seems hell bent on micromanaging every aspect of Miles' show despite the fact he knows nothing about the culinary arts. Evan doesn’t even like sweets—until Miles seduces him with a rainbow of delectable confections he can't resist.

. . . it's a collision.

With every confrontation, the intensity between them flares even hotter until they're not sure if it's hatred they feel . . .or something else. Is it possible for two people with nothing in common to discover common ground and romance?

EXCERPT

“You’re late,”Evan said, head bent towards his screen, fingers not missing a beat as he typed furiously.

“I know, I’m sorry, I thought I’d grab a coffee.”Miles slid into the chair next to Evan, but Evan still didn’t look up.

“Oh thanks for bringing me one too,”Evan said levelly, even though he had to know that Miles only had one cup in his hands.

“I . . .uh. . .didn’t know you wanted one?”Miles said sheepishly. He’d made it back into the building two minutes late, and then had raced to Evan’s cubicle, only to not find him there. He’d made the rounds, until one of the writers stopped him and said Evan was in the conference room, still working after the meeting had ended.

Why hadn’t it occurred to Miles to bring him coffee? He liked the good coffee place as much as anyone else. It was probably because instead of actively trying to charm anyone in particular, Miles just fallen into bed with willing people and had never wanted someone who didn’t want him back—or wanted him but fought it. Miles knew he was going to have learn to be more aware and less selfish if he was ever going to convince Evan to consider dating him. A great almost-blowjob wasn’t going to cut it. Not with Evan.

Sex was probably off the table now, even though Miles knew Evan wanted it. Miles wasn’t familiar with the sort of self-denial Evan practiced; if he wanted someone and the feeling was mutual, sex happened. It was an easy way to live, and an easy way to get off. Everything about Evan was complicated, but Miles wanted him anyway. Inexplicably.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring you coffee,”Miles said when Evan remained silent, typing away, the staccato of the keys all the response he probably deserved.

“It’s okay.” Evan paused. “I wouldn’t expect you to be looking out for other people. Me, especially.”

And yeah, that was galling. Especially galling when Miles had spent the last half an hour discovering that nobody had probably ever really looked out for Evan before. It probably wouldn’t take an extraordinary amount of effort to make him feel special and considered. And Miles still couldn’t figure out how to meet even the lowest of expectations.

“I’m sorry, I’m . . .I know it isn’t an excuse, but I was with Lucy, and Chloe and Steph and . . .”Miles hesitated, trying to find the best way to say, sorry, we were gossiping about you and they told me you were a foster kid and I wish you had told me yourself.

All Miles knew was that was definitely not the way to break the news.

If you ask my mom, she will tell you gleefully that I have been cooking—or wanting to cook—from a very early age. I had one of those tiny kids kitchens, and would frequently wheel it into the living room and would try to cook along with Julia Child on PBS.

There’s a lot of relief in these stories, because she hates to cook and has admitted freely that she isn’t very good at it.

I didn’t really learn from her much, but I did learn from my grandmother, who was fantastic in the kitchen. I also started making meals for my family at a young age, because my mom was a piano teacher and she often would be giving lessons right up til dinner time. It started by mom asking me to heat something up in the oven, but as I grew older and learned more, it got more complicated, usually by my own choice.

By the time I was sixteen, I was making most of my family’s dinners from scratch. When I went to college, my dad mournfully texted me and said he missed me living at home. But those experiments when I figured out what to feed the rest of my family ignited a life-long desire to cook.

Many people ask me why I didn’t go to culinary school. I did want to, though my parents were against it, but in the end, I’m actually very happy I didn’t, because cooking for me isn’t a career. I don’t want to become dependent on it to make me a living wage. I enjoy cooking and baking because they relax me. There’s something undefinably awesome about combining a bunch of ingredients together and the end result being more delicious than the sum of its parts.

I collected cookbooks for a long time, but they were clunky and difficult, and to figure out what you wanted to make for dinner, you had to pull them all out and slog through them. I liked reading them for fun, but they weren’t exactly convenient.

That’s why I love food blogging. It makes cooking a great dinner for your friends and family SO EASY and so accessible. There’s even videos, if you’re feeling anxious or nervous, and they show you exactly how to prepare the recipe.

I find the videos strangely hypnotic, and I could watch Nick from The Scran Line bake cakes and macarons all day. I could watch my favorite bloggers, Half-Baked Harvest and JoCooks, make delicious, innovative, healthy recipes all day. It’s a great medium, with lots of creativity, and certainly leads to some interesting kitchen experiments.

I encourage everyone who’s read Bite Me, to check out the Recipes and Inspirations section at the back, there’s a whole list of fantastic recipes and blogs. Also, I’m giving away a free recipe notecard with a recipe from Bite Me, and you just have to sign up here: http://bit.ly/2EeQiCJ

Beth Bolden lives in Portland, Oregon with her supportive husband. She wholly believes in Keeping Portland Weird, but wishes she didn’t have to make the yearly pilgrimage up to Seattle to watch her Boston Red Sox play baseball. She’s a fan of fandoms, and spends too much of her free time on tumblr.

Beth has been writing practically since she learned the alphabet. Unfortunately, her first foray into novel writing, titled Big Bear with Sparkly Earrings, wasn’t a bestseller, but hope springs eternal. She’s published eight novels and two novellas, with Catch Me, the next novel in the Kitchen Gods series, releasing in May 2018.